Saturday, 2 April 2016

1900. Valentine’s Day. English style gentility meets the
ferocity of the Australian landscape as five private school girls recount the
details of a mystery that will traumatise a community and grow into legend. Three
girls and their governess disappear that day. One is later found but has no
recollection of events. Another who turned back is unclear of what happened.
The fifth girl, an orphan, did not go on the excursion but meets her own tragic
fate. What hold does this ancient land have over the naïve newcomers who
attempt to conquer it with arcane codes of civility and properness?

In many ways it’s an impenetrable mystery heavy on
atmosphere and symbolism but short on closure. It’s interesting then that
director Matthew Lutton and playwright Tom Wright (adapting from Joan Lindsay’s
novel) have chosen to present the theatrical version as Australian gothic horror. It features outstanding sound and lighting design (J. David Franzke and
Paul Jackson respectively) augmented by composer Ash Gibson Greig’s haunting
flourishes. The results are startling. It is easily the best use of the Heath
Ledger Theatre space I have seen in the last few years.

Set designer Zoe Atkinson has wisely restricted the spacious
stage area with black walls forming an irregular shaped triangle, the base of
which is the front of the stage, creeping into a darkened apex upstage left.
Hanging over upstage right is an ominous, large bundle of sticks and brush, an
ever present reminder of the harshness of the land. The other notable element
is a voluminous wardrobe in the middle of one wall. We never see Hanging Rock
itself but its presence is concisely evoked in the precise language.

That language is finely delivered by the five actresses -
Harriet Gordon-Anderson, Arielle Gray, Amber McMahon, Elizabeth Nabben and
Nikki Shiels - who all inhabit various personas throughout the recounting of
the tale. From the adolescent school girls to an array of other characters both
male and female, they are excellent in clearly delineating each person through
accent, posture, and aided by costuming. There is complete clarity as to who is
in each scene. It is an impressive ensemble.

The play starts with all five of them in a line detailing
the events of that fateful day. A rhythm is established as dialogue and characters
are rotated seamlessly between them, building in intensity until a jarring
black out as the girls, onstage and in our imagination, disappear into the
wilderness. It’s a technique that is filmic in nature and repeated often. The
stage completely dark and then the next scene bursts into full light,
immaculately presented like a beautifully composed frame. Then slam
cut to black to unsettle and build atmosphere and tension. The speed and
precision of the transition from scene to scene is superb and attention
grabbing.

Discordant, insistent sound adds to these transitions and
suggests the horror elements implicit in what may have occurred up at the rock.
The aural landscape is subtly presented as sounds of the bush intrude. The
attention to detail is immaculate with one sequence including the crunch of
gravel underfoot in time to the actress’s movements.

Each scene has a title displayed above the stage. I found
this superfluous and a little distracting. So much skill and effort had gone
into crafting the sense of place and time that these headings felt perfunctory
by comparison. The wardrobe, symbolic of the portal between worlds
and of the gap between dreaming and reality, was ultimately revealed to have a more practical
application. This diluted its own silent mystery.

The use of a tumble mat for a sequence involving a
mini-trampoline (useless physical movement) felt out of place, somehow too
modern. It also cluttered the space taking away from those beautifully staged
‘frames’. More critically it anchored the last stanza of the production as
Lutton could no longer deploy the razor sharp scene transitions and slam cuts
to black as the mat was too big to move quickly.

This robbed the production of a clear stylistic choice just as
the narrative itself began to meander to a somewhat tame conclusion. In this
the expert use of so many devices to ratchet up the tension is let down by the
anti-climactic nature of the ending. There are also some late shrill moments
that felt tonally out of place such as the attack on the returned girl by other
students desperate to know what happened.

Putting these few issues aside, director Matthew Lutton has
presented a visually and aurally compelling production with an excellent ensemble
of actresses. The stagecraft on display during this sole preview was
exceptional and is sure to enthrall Saturday’s opening night audience. The show
is on at the Heath Ledger Theatre and runs until 17 April.